Germany’s wind farms are now producing so much electricity they are paying users to take it

[nationalize the fed]

Germany Pays to Halt Danish Wind Power to Protect Own Output

Bloomberg Business

Germany pays to idle Danish wind farms to ease grid congestion

Danish power producers pulled 37 gigawatt-hours in November

Germany’s wind farms are now producing so much electricity one of its grid managers is paying generators in neighboring Denmark to shut down to keep its network from overloading.



German network operator TenneT TSO GmbH paid Danish power producers to withhold 37 gigawatt-hours of output in November, or about a day of production from the region’s biggest nuclear reactor, according to data from the Nord Pool Spot AS exchange in Oslo. The increase from 1.5 gigawatt-hours a year ago came as TenneT began from 2015 to boost payments to Danish producers via its neighboring grid to avoid cutting German output.

When gusty weather floods the network with power and threatens stability, Germany can seek cuts, according to grid rules. If such reductions are still not enough, Germany will then start shutting its own turbines. The country’s shift to renewables has more than doubled its wind power over the past decade, with output reaching a record on Nov. 18. Investment in power lines to move it across the country has failed to keep up...snip

...This comes as Germany saw negative prices in the market for hours on at least 10 days during the last month in high winds, forcing producers to pay as much as 116.99 euros per megawatt-hour to users to take electricity. Danish electricity output had to be reduced by 237 gigawatt-hours so far this year, a 25-fold increase year on year...snip
MORE: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-01/german-wind-power-surplus-spurs-cash-for-neighbor-to-switch-off

How to store this renewable electricity that producers are paying people to take? H2 is better than batteries.

[Sherman A1]

1. K&R!

[kristopher]

2. Not necessarily - it's probably best just dumping the excess wind.

Building more capacity that is more widely distributed is likely to be less expensive than using hydrogen and will have added benefit of pushing fossil/nuclear offline.

Also, if storage is required, there are a number of alternatives that are probably going to be better than hydrogen. Batteries via V2G comes to mind, along with several new, simple technologies that are upwards of around 80% round trip efficiency.

Hydrostor:


Hydrostor Wants to Stash Energy in Underwater Bags

Submerged bags of air could turn wind and solar power into round-the-clock resources
By Jean Kumagai
Posted 10 Jul 2014
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/hydrostor-wants-to-stash-energy-in-underwater-bags

Underwater Energy Storage – Hydrostor
November 30, 2015Energy Matters

The world’s first underwater compressed air energy storage system is up and running and is claimed to be one of the cheapest forms of energy storage available.

Located in Toronto Island, Canada; the system’s underwater air storage component is located 2.5km off the shore of Lake Ontario – one of the five Great Lakes of North America.

How Hydrator Works
An air compressor converts the electrical energy into compressed air pressurized to the same level found at depth where the accumulators (balloons or solid containers) are located; which can be 50-500 meters below the surface of a body of water. The compression process also creates heat, which is captured for use during the generation phase...
http://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/underwater-energy-storage-em5220/

Or how about on-shore at one of Isentropic's thermal storage (rock battery) facilities?

http://www.isentropic.co.uk

[kristopher]

6. Good modeling on the OP's question

This study from the Journal of Power Sources does a good job of researching the question posed in the OP. It's open access paper if you'd like to look it over. One big difference to consider is that the capacity factor for Germany's offshore wind is as high as 65% iirc.

Cost-minimized combinations of wind power, solar power and electrochemical storage, powering the grid up to 99.9% of the time

Abstract
We model many combinations of renewable electricity sources (inland wind, offshore wind, and photovoltaics) with electrochemical storage (batteries and fuel cells), incorporated into a large grid system (72 GW). The purpose is twofold: 1) although a single renewable generator at one site produces intermittent power, we seek combinations of diverse renewables at diverse sites, with storage, that are not intermittent and satisfy need a given fraction of hours. And 2) we seek minimal cost, calculating true cost of electricity without subsidies and with inclusion of external costs. Our model evaluated over 28 billion combinations of renewables and storage, each tested over 35,040 h (four years) of load and weather data. We find that the least cost solutions yield seemingly-excessive generation capacity—at times, almost three times the electricity needed to meet electrical load. This is because diverse renewable generation and the excess capacity together meet electric load with less storage, lowering total system cost. At 2030 technology costs and with excess electricity displacing natural gas, we find that the electric system can be powered 90%–99.9% of hours entirely on renewable electricity, at costs comparable to today's—but only if we optimize the mix of generation and storage technologies.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378775312014759

[drm604]

14. Simple and obvious. It's just a matter of doing the engineering.

I've always wondered why people say that intermittency and storage issues make renewables impractical. There are many ways to store energy.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

3. What about the giggle jewels

I want more coal and oil

[packman]

4. But,But, But - if they "dump" all that wind energy

think of the polluted beaches, the fouled air, the wind-coated birds and dead fish - my God, the destruction. We'll probably have wide-spread climate change with increased tornadoes due to all that wind just spilling all over the place.

[ffr]

8. Next will be solar spills

I like the way you think!

[Matariki]

5. Electric cars!

[Dont call me Shirley]

7. We need to do that here. Like now!

[diverdownjt]

10. Yes..yes..yes

[Dont call me Shirley]

11. Welcome, diverdownjt!

[commercialgrade]

9. Amazing

[drm604]

12. Oops. posted this in response to the OP, when I meant to respond to post #2

Last edited Sat Dec 5, 2015, 01:07 AM - Edit history (1)

Please ignore.

[NNadir]

13. It is simple and obvious that the need to dump energy makes so called "renewables"

impractical.

Whenever one of these posts pointing to a peak comes up, people immediately draw the wrong conclusions, and none of them have anything to do with any knowledge whatsoever about engineering.

[gmoney]

15. So, are German consumers getting free energy?

This seems to be entering into the "too cheap to meter" territory people once wistfully predicted would result from nuclear energy. I hope the citizens are enjoying greatly reduced or even free electricity as a result. Maybe they could redirect some overflow to France and other nearby EU nations?